Embarrassing Bodies series saves NHS £280k in a month

4 July 2011

Dr Dawn Harper, Dr Christian Jessen and Dr Pixie McKenna

 

Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies website is now so popular with fans of the hit TV show that it is saving the NHS tens of thousands of pounds.

The site has now had over 100 million page views and thanks to the new My VideoDoctor symptom checkers, Embarrassing Bodies online has saved the equivalent in GPs' surgery time of around £283,000 since it launched only 5 weeks ago.

The saving via My VideoDoctor and other symptom checkers so far would equate to:

• 2.9 Ambulances including medical equipment  - or -
• 13 Baby ventilators - or -
• 13 Nurses' starting salaries - or -
• 2,024 Self-propelled wheelchairs - or -
• 16,677 Pairs of crutches

My VideoDoctor was developed in conjunction with NHS Direct and is fronted by the Embarrassing Bodies doctors Dr Christian Jessen, Dr Dawn Harper and Dr Pixie McKenna. The video-based web application guides users through an interactive diagnostic process based on NHS algorithms and decision trees to offer the appropriate health advice.

Hosted on www.Channel4.com and developed by Maverick Television, the same company who make the TV series, the Embarrassing Bodies site's simple step by step guides and frank health advice are so well regarded they are regularly recommended to patients by NHS healthcare professionals.

Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor (Multiplatform) at Channel 4 said: "The Embarrassing Bodies site is incredibly popular and we have worked hard to make it a valuable resource to people seeking health advice. We wanted to take the interactive nature of the site up yet another gear - taking our cue from Live from the Clinic, where we used online technology to offer the public the chance to be seen live by the Embarrassing Bodies doctor. The interactive video symptom checkers offer users a friendly face to guide them through the diagnosis process."

The site also hosts unique interactive videos of many of the cases seen on the recent Embarrassing Bodies Live from the Clinic series, providing further information on the conditions and treatments and enabling viewers to create a personalised set of useful links to review whenever they want. 

The site also recently launched another innovative new service which has made significant impact - My Healthchecker. My Healthchecker enables people to take a variety of online medical self-tests to find out their personal risk levels for conditions ranging from Diabetes to Autism. 300,000 people have now registered for My Healthchecker and 2.5 million tests have so far been done online. The results offer advice on what to do next, as well as enabling users to compare their results anonymously with other people.

Ends

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

How do we calculate the savings to the NHS?

Through our partnership with NHS Direct, we know from user surveys what action users would typically have taken (for example visiting their GP) if they hadn't used an online symptom checker. In many cases the advice given to users includes low-cost advice, such as self-care, or a pharmacy visit for example. In cases where a cost to the NHS would otherwise have been incurred, a saving may be generated. We also know that not all users follow the advice given, so we attempt to be conservative with our savings calculations.